Ten years of excellence from BUILDing SCHOLARS of UTEP
By John P Garza and Lourdes Echegoyen
In the ten years since its inception, the BUILDing SCHOLARS (BUILD) program at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) aimed to be a source of positive influence on its students, mentors and the broader community. With many accomplishments with innovative approaches to undergraduate research training to institutional development and multi-institute community building, the program’s impact has been far-reaching and varied.
Training undergraduate students
May 2015 - Inaugural BUILDing SCHOLARS cohort, BUILD PIs, and former UTEP President Diana Natalicio, PhD (center)
Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the student training program under the leadership of Thomas Boland, PhD, and Osvaldo Morera, PhD, has provided opportunities for research for many student cohorts over the past 10 years.
BUILD award recipients receive tuition support and a monthly stipend for the research that they conduct with UTEP faculty members, for two years or more, typically beginning in the fall semester of their junior year, sometimes earlier.
Students also attend research and career development workshops, receive one-on-one academic advising from BUILDing SCHOLARS project analyst, Lorena Orozco, and have direct access to the program’s professional science writer, John Garza, PhD, for technical and academic writing assistance.
Additionally, BUILD fellows spend their summers conducting research at partner institutions, obtaining world-class biomedical research experience with new mentors in labs across the nation. BUILDing SCHOLARS currently have 10 research partners that include well renowned research institutions such as Mayo Clinic, Baylor College of Medicine, and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
Every trainee has attended at least one summer research program (SRP), while most spend two or three summers away. The impact of the SRPs has been significant for student career trajectories, with many of them attending graduate programs at their former summer labs or adjusting research interests based on their experiences.
“As a former participant of the Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP) as an undergraduate at The Ohio State University, I have benefitted from programs that seek to provide opportunities to students,” Morera said. “The BUILDing SCHOLARS program is a transformative program that goes far beyond what SROP did for me. Between professional development activities, emphasis on research beginning in a student’s first year in the program via research foundation and research driven coursework to active research involvement at UTEP and at our partner institutions, BUILDing SCHOLARS will have truly provided opportunities to students who would not have received those opportunities and will have impacted the face of science, going forward.”
Cecilia Hinojosa, PhD
Over the last 10 years, 161 students have been supported by BUILD, with 143 graduates to date. Of these, 89 have continued to pursue doctoral degrees, including PhDs, medical, dental and pharmacy degrees. Over 90% of participants have been Hispanic students, many of whom are first generation students and/or financially disadvantaged. Serving these students is important to BUILDing SCHOLARS’ mission of contributing substantially to the diversification of the biomedical research workforce.
Cecilia Hinojosa, PhD, who was the first BUILD trainee from UTEP as well as from any of the BUILD programs across the country to complete her doctorate degree, recently announced that she will join the University of New Mexico’s psychology department as an assistant professor next year.
“During my time as a BUILDing SCHOLAR, I was challenged in the best ways to become a better scientist and was provided endless resources and tools to achieve this dream.” Hinojosa said. “I would not be the scientist I am today without this experience, and I am thankful I can now give back and provide opportunities like this to other underrepresented students through my research, teaching, and mentoring.”
Carlos Portillo, Jr., PhD, another program alum, currently serves as a social scientist at the Food and Drug Administration.
“My time in BUILD helped me understand the significant value and application of evidence-based research,” Portillo said. “More specifically, BUILD helped me understand how evidence-based research can help improve our understanding of various health phenomena.”
As the funding for BUILD comes to an end, UTEP has committed to sustaining the training program with seats for 18 students. They will be funded at the same level of NIH support and the UTEP Campus Office of Undergraduate Research Initiatives (COURI) will continue to administer the program.
BUILD support for undergraduate research extended beyond award recipients. While BUILD fellows left UTEP for various SRPs, BUILDing SCHOLARS hosted its own program every summer, organized by principal investigator (PI) Amy Wagler, PhD, PI Karina Canaba, PhD, Post-doctoral fellow Angelica Monarrez, PhD, and Orozco.
The program welcomed students from 12 local regional Pipeline Institutions to conduct research at UTEP. Since 2016, a total of 81 undergraduate students have participated in the BUILD SRP at UTEP.
Carlos Portillo, Jr., PhD
While many arrived from local institutions such as El Paso Community College or New Mexico State University, others came from more distant institutions, such as Western New Mexico University, Northern New Mexico College and Xavier University of Louisiana.
Institutional Development
June 2015 - Inaugural SCALE-UP Room Workshop with Robert Beichner, PhD
BUILDing SCHOLARS leaves behind an innovative physical space called the SCALE-UP room.
Designed by North Carolina State University professor of physics Robert Beichner, PhD, the SCALE-UP room is a high-tech space designed to encourage discussion, collaboration, and interactive activities.
The room has served to host workshops, undergraduate research classes and BUILD events, and was updated this past winter with the latest display casting software to ensure its functionality into the future.
The institutional contributions from BUILDing SCHOLARS include additions to curriculum in the form of course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs).
The Freshman Year Research Intensive Sequence (FYRIS) is a three-course sequence that includes a research foundations course and research driven courses, in which students conduct real-world research with the professor as part of courses required by their degree plan. While FYRIS is required for all BUILD fellows who enter the program as freshmen, it is open to all entering freshmen with an interest in research. FYRIS will be sustained through sources in the various colleges at UTEP, particularly the college of science.
BUILDing SCHOLARS has also played a role in contributing to other offices on campus.
For example, the Research, Evaluation, and Assessment Services (REAS) center at UTEP, directed by Guadalupe Corral, PhD, has benefited from its evaluation of BUILDing SCHOLARS activities, as it has provided evaluation research opportunities to dozens of undergraduate and graduate students. The comprehensive evaluation conducted by the center has provided the BUILD research team with an abundance of rich data to analyze and disseminate.
Several undergraduate students involved in evaluation have presented BUILDing SCHOLARS evaluation results at various undergraduate symposiums and conferences. Further, REAS has grown from the addition of two full-time program evaluators Rafael Aguilera, PhD, and former BUILD post-doctoral fellow, Angelica Monarrez, PhD.
BUILDing SCHOLARS has also directly contributed to outstanding faculty hires in Biology and Chemistry education at UTEP.
Jeffrey Olimpo, PhD, was hired in 2015 as a biology education researcher in the biological sciences department with BUILD funds to support his first two years of salary and start-up expenses. Since then, Olimpo has received over $2 million in grants to support his research, was granted tenure in 2020, and in 2023 became director of the Institute for Scholarship, Pedagogy, Innovation and Research Excellence (InSPIRE) at UTEP.
From left: Jeffery Olimpo, PhD & Elizabeth Day, PhD
Elizabeth Day, PhD, was hired in 2021, also with BUILD funds, as a chemistry education researcher in the chemistry and biochemistry department. Day has received over $3 million in grants to support her research, has revamped the general chemistry lecture courses, and has become an excellent collaborator with other members of her department.
Contributing to change and growth at UTEP
Spring ’24 BUILD graduates (front center) with ’24-’25 cohort and BUILD PIs (back row)
Over its tenure, BUILD has persisted through many changes and growth at UTEP. The university has undergone multiple changes in leadership during this time, including transitioning to a new president in 2019, a new provost in 2020 and a new vice-president for research in 2023. UTEP also became an R1 research university in December 2018. While the aim to achieve R1 status existed prior to BUILD, the program contributed by solidifying initiatives to support this achievement.
The faculty-focused Jumpstart program, under the leadership of Stephen Aley, PhD and Marc Cox, PhD, is one such initiative. The program has been a collaboration with the University of North Texas National Research Mentoring Network’s proposal development training team, led by Dr. Harlan Jones.
Jumpstart assisted 47 early career faculty members at UTEP between 2019-20 and 2022-23 to develop their proposals and receive expert external reviews for revisions before submission. The program yielded $18 million in new grants to UTEP, generated by participants as principal investigators.
Throughout the ongoing development at UTEP, BUILDing SCHOLARS has maintained a core in leadership amongst changes in its own personnel. Of the eight original PIs leading the first phase of the project, four have remained. Lourdes Echegoyen, PhD, Co-Director of the BUILD Administrative Core and Director of COURI, has been a lynchpin, ensuring the timely execution and quality of all of the program’s activities.
“It’s fun to reminisce that when we were writing the Phase I proposal, we decided as a team to put two PIs from different departments as co-directors of each core to both lessen the burden on single individuals and provide a diversity of approach, not thinking of the benefits that decision would bring if one of the co-directors left the institution or the project,” Echegoyen said. “Having leadership meetings every two weeks to exchange information was also critical for everyone to raise important questions and suggest solutions to issues. They helped me stay on top of things and provide directionality when needed.
Interestingly, even though we had a dream team from the start and departing PIs are still thoroughly missed, we were able to continue operating relatively seamlessly while a new PI/co-director was identified and brought in. Being in the know allowed me to jump in to help while the new individual caught up.”
Similarly, the BUILDing SCHOLARS staff who ensure the smooth operation of business and administrative activities, student support services, event planning and more, have sustained long-term commitments to the program.
Assistant director Evelyn Lopez has coordinated the staff and administrative needs of the program from November 2014, with Orozco joining as project analyst two months later.
Program coordinator/manager April Quintana has served for seven years, while Garza joined as a professional science writer in the fourth year of the grant.
The experience and institutional knowledge the team has brought to the program has been vital for its success and that of its fellows.
2017 BUILDing SCHOLARS SRP cohort at the annual COURI Symposium
Amy Wagler, PhD, Co-Director of the Research Enrichment Core since 2017, has been instrumental in organizing the highly productive BUILD research group, with participation by one other PI, two staff members, two evaluators and several post-doctoral fellows and graduate and undergraduate students.
“Our research team for BUILD is a diverse, productive, and complementary group,” Wagler said. “The team is multidisciplinary and each of us has a unique perspective on the research topics we study. I think this is the key to our success: having a diverse team each with a valuable contribution, making the whole greater than the sum of the parts.”
Since 2019, the group has presented at over 20 conferences and published *12 peer-reviewed articles, with five more currently under review. The papers use both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the numerous positive impacts BUILD has had on student success, from education and career outcomes to the role of various forms of mentorship, and interactions of all of these factors with Hispanic/Latinx culture. Many more papers are currently in progress, with plans to continue this work with support from a no-cost extension of the grant.
Lourdes Echegoyen, PhD, principal investigator of UTEP BUILDing SCHOLARS
For the past 10 years, BUILDing SCHOLARS has been a symbol of excellence, from the many achievements of its students to the service of its leadership and staff, and by its many contributions to undergraduate research and faculty development at UTEP and beyond. The foresight of its leadership and institutional support from UTEP will allow it to continue well into the future.
“BUILDing SCHOLARS has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my professional life,” Echegoyen said.
“It opened my eyes to and ratified the importance of honest, frequent, and transparent communication, effective distribution of labor and picking partners with a collaborative mind-set.”
*To read more about their publications, visit: https://buildingscholars.utep.edu/web/about-us/build-publications
The Diversity Program Consortium Coordination and Evaluation Center at UCLA is supported by Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health / National Institutes of General Medical Sciences under award number U54GM119024.
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